


hearts of stone crumble to dust

by BeforeDawn



Category: The Durrells (TV)
Genre: F/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 03:17:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeforeDawn/pseuds/BeforeDawn
Summary: Tumblr prompt, Louisa and Spiros see each other after 3x08





	hearts of stone crumble to dust

Louisa isn’t sure how she got to the cliff exactly.

She remembers going for a walk because one of the houseguests accidentally sent one of the pelicans free, which resulted in Gerry causing a riot until they were once again found and safely returned to their enclosure. After the whole ordeal had been dealt with, she found the house altogether too small with the man and Gerry still arguing about how animals should be kept, and found that she no longer had any private space inside of it – not that she had much of it before anyways.

So, she’d left, thankful for the afternoon breeze as she strolled away from the stuffy house and tried to clear her head a little. She hadn’t had any time to process anything in the past few weeks because she had been busy trying to find the English visitors guest houses and then ended up putting up the few who were left in her attic. At least she had made some money from it, which is something that she’ll never complain about.

She finds herself treading the familiar path to the cliff before she even realises where she had been going, deciding that the rock was a good a place as any to sit for a while and clear her thoughts, she marched closer.

But it seemed that she was not alone.

Spiros’ taxi cab sits empty as the man himself sits on the rock, head in his hands as he mutters to himself quietly in Greek. She feels like she can’t breathe, as if she was breathing in smoke instead of oxygen and the feeling of it burns her lungs and makes her feel like she’s dying from the inside out. She hasn’t even seen him since  _that day_ , except in passing as he took guests away from her house, sharing a nod and a tight-lipped smile was as close as they got to any sort of communication. Louisa had been telling herself that it’s better this way, it would be all too easy to slip back into their old routine and go on as if nothing happened. But she needs it to hurt, she needs to feel like the rug was pulled out from under her, she needs that for it to feel real. Oh, how she needs it to feel real, to not be some fantasy that she played out in her head.

She turns to go, because it’s too much,  _it’s too much_ and she’s not at all ready to face this –

In her haste, she turns and nearly falls over, swearing under her breath before she can think better of it. His head snaps up and he gets to his feet at the sound and she feels trapped when she lifts her head to meet his gaze. She can’t help but think that of all times she’s ever thought the words  _shoot me,_ this might be the one time she truly means it. They stand in silence for a moment, just staring at each other. It eventually becomes too tense and the smoke inside her lungs has blossomed into a fire and she has to look away for fear of being burned.

“I’ll just be going – sorry to intrude.” She hates the way her voice sounds choked, and she stumbles backwards some more, unable to look at him. She hears him approach and keeps her gaze firmly on the ground until he stops before her. He’s so close that the scent of him wafts towards her, he smells of summer days and vanilla and something else that she’s always just categorized as  _Spiros_.

“Look at me.” He pleads, his voice barely above a whisper, not that it has to be any louder because he’s standing so close that she can hear him breathing.

“No.” She tells him firmly, but with him standing so close and smelling so good she can feel her resolve waning. She knows how good it would feel to take a small step closer and fall into his arms, to be completely surrounded by him as he strokes her hair and tells her it’s going to be alright.

“Louisa,  _please._ ” He begs her and the sweet way he says her first name breaks her, the way he softly whistles the “s” sound so it sounds more like a prayer than a word. She tilts her head up ever so slightly, noticing how close he really is as he almost bumps his nose on her forehead as she raises her gaze to meet his. “Please, don’t call me that.”

Spiros inhales sharply as she lifts her head and he opens his mouth to start to apologise, but she shakes her head and he seems to understand everything that doesn’t need to be said. She doesn’t want his apology, she hardly blames him for going back to his wife to be with his children, she would probably make the same choice. But just because it’s nobody’s fault doesn’t make it hurt any less to look at him, to be near him – and from the looks of the man this whole thing hasn’t been easy on him either.

She hates how she can’t think of conversation because they’ve never been short of things to talk about and the silences they fell into have always been comfortable. But this silence feels heavy like all the unsaid words lay in the small space between them like a dam waiting to explode. They had to keep the dam intact because they were at the crossroads and the only option now looked to be to go backwards instead of forwards. To revert. Which was harder said than done because, after all, human instinct told them to keep moving forward, to evolve.

His forehead comes to gently rest on hers and she’s taken back to the house a few weeks before when this whole thing had blown up in their faces. “Let me go.” She tells him, not knowing that she had been crying until she opened her mouth and tasted the salt from her tears. He shakes his head and she notices that he’s crying too, strange because it’s not something she ever thought to see, Spiros crying. He’d been close, at the house, but managed to keep his emotions inside, unlike her.

“I don’t know how.” His hands come up to rest on her shoulders before travelling down her bare arms, leaving Goosebumps in their wake, before taking her hands in his own and interlocking their fingers. “I’ve been trying, I want to be better. I want to be a better father and husband, but all I can think about is you. Don’t tell me to let you go, I don’t know how.”

His lips press against her forehead and he pulls her towards him, and she buries her head in his shoulder, allowing some of her tears to fall as he buries his head in her neck. She doesn’t know how long they stand there like that, sobbing in each other’s arms, but eventually, she pulls away and brings her hands up to his face, using her fingers to wipe away his tears.

“You must let me go. We both must. It’s the only way that we’re going to be able to stay sane – and perhaps be able to become friends again.” She tells him, finally pulling out of his embrace entirely and allowing herself some distance. “And if I can’t have anything else, I’d at least like to have you as my friend.”

He opens his mouth as if to say something else – but this has already been more than she can bear, so she turns to leave and hurries down the path as fast as she is able to, wondering how on earth she was going to let that beautiful man go.


End file.
